RACVYOXO

This project developed through an artist residency in Minami Shimabara in Nagasaki and focuses on seventeenth century dictionaries. Minami Shimabara is historically important as the place where Western movable type printing first reached Japan and enabled early printed books. The project draws on this context and uses "Rakuyōshū" and the "Japanese–Portuguese Dictionary" as key motifs. A dictionary does more than organize meaning and usage. It also preserves images and cultural understanding embedded in language by its editors. Historical dictionaries offer access to fragments of how the world was once perceived.
The work combines selected words from these dictionaries with landscape photographs taken in Minami Shimabara. The photographs are layered onto the printed pages. Over time silver leaf corrodes and the photosensitive emulsion fades. The images gradually recede while the printed words become clearer. Images from different periods intersect on the surface. The accumulating material changes record the presence of time and shape the meaning of the work.